Self-esteem and Work Engagement influencing Teaching skill among Indian Higher Education Teachers

Abstract

 

Purpose – The study is an attempt to address the concern of education quality in higher education in the region of eastern Uttar Pradesh in India. The study aims to find ways of improving teaching skill of higher education teachers. Self-determination theory has been adapted and teaching skill has been identified as basic psychological need for competence of teachers. The study further tests how internalized motivation namely work engagement and self-esteem could be helpful in achieving psychological need for competence among teachers by proposing a model.

Design/methodology/approach – Study is based on student’s feedback so sample includes higher education teacher and students. The sample was taken from five different types of leading higher education institutes of the region. The sample consists of 401 respondents from varied discipline and subjects. Structured questionnaires were distributed among teachers and their respective students. Analysis includes reliability analysis, correlation analysis Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) followed by structural equation modeling (SEM) to propose the model for establishing the relationships.

Findings – The study proposed three hypotheses out of which two were approved. The finding revealed that self esteem has significant influence on work engagement and teaching skill, whereas, the work engagement and teaching skill was found negatively related. Teacher with self-esteem will be engaged and may show better teaching skills, but it is not necessary that engaging teacher will enhance their skill.

 Practical Implications – Study revealed that practitioners and policy maker should make efforts to make teachers feel valued. The policy governing the teachers should have scope of making teachers feel good about themselves, as the finding suggests teachers with self-esteem will have good teaching skills. Secondly excess engagement of teachers may have adverse effect on their teaching skill.

Originality/value – The study is unique as it is based on student’s response and most of the studies available are based on self-reported measure. There are very limited studies on teaching skill in Indian context. There are no studies which observes teaching skill in the frame of self-determination theory and identifies it as psychological need for competence.